Google Expands Neural Machine Translation Support by Including Additional European Languages

Translating content from one foreign language to another can be quite cumbersome, especially when doing it by hand. Luckily, there are online tools which help us get a basic translation of the words we don’t understand or find complicated. Google’s Translate feature is very commonly used, and it appears the technology giant has given it a big upgrade.

Neural Machine Translation For Google Translate

It is quite interesting to think about how Google’s Translate function is able of turning “gibberish” text into something more comprehensive for virtually every Chrome user on the planet. While browsing foreign language websites is not overly difficult, there are always terms we don’t understand or comprehend. Google Translate provides a -sometimes rough – translation of the world into something most people can understand with relative ease.

What is even more impressive is how Google provides this service on the fly within the Chrome browser. Although this feature has been nothing short of amazing so far, the technology giant is always looking for ways to improve their service. As a result, they will soon activate neural machine translation, at least where translations between Dutch and English are concerned. This is quite a significant addition to a very commonly used service.

What this new feature does is ensure the quality of translations improves by quite a margin. When translating any foreign language into English, the results provided by Google Translate can be quite mixed, to say the least. Using a neural machine translation should yield far more comprehensive and accurate results as a whole. It is not the first time Google enables this feature either, but it is good to see it come to Dutch and English translations regardless.

When comparing the old way of translating content to the neural machine translation-enabled version, it is not hard to spot the differences. There is a very big difference between both results, even though the original input has not changed in the slightest. It is evident for everyone to see neural machine translation is capable of providing better “automated’ translation results, which is what people tend to expect from Google these days. Improvements like these will be of great value to Google Chrome users all over the world, that much is certain.

For the time being, the neural machine translation-supported result is available as part of the website-based Google Translate, as well as the Android and iOS app featuring this option. The Chrome browser will receive this update at a later stage, although no official date has been announced at this time. Additionally, Google plans to release this update as part of an effect to improve European language translations when converting to and from English.

The main selling point of neural machine translation is how the algorithm translates entire sentences in one go, rather than chopping it into pieces for individual translation. This technology creates a more cohesive and comprehensive result that resembles an official translation. It is expected Google will continue to refine their translation services moving forward, even though this is a big step in the right direction.

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About The Author

JP Buntinx is a FinTech and Bitcoin enthusiast living in Belgium. His passion for finance and technology made him one of the world's leading freelance Bitcoin writers, and he aims to achieve the same level of respect in the FinTech sector.